Beyond Religion

Ignoramus to the unusual silence of her surroundings and the languid darkness of the sky, she was sitting on a maroon-painted wooden bench in Iqbal Park, Gwadar. Despite withering badly due to age, it was still her usual spot from the last two months of her life. In those months, she had adapted herself to the normality of taking the same broken seat always which wouldn’t be taken by another, as she saw her life completely parallel to others. Things that mattered to the world were usually funny for her, and the world hardly even thought of things of her concern. She considered herself an exception, a rareness, a phenomenon in this world of arrogant perfectionists. It was a gloomy day of the rainy season, and dark clouds had smothered the sky. There was no trace of rain, but people preferred to stay in their homes that day foreseeing a heavy storm. But Alice didn’t even think of this. She sat on her usual seat and got lost gazing in a void far away in the distance. A void which opened in some other world, unreachable to anyone else. The problem was simply that, she had forgotten which of the two worlds was real.

***

Abraham opened his eyes somewhere on the beach of Clifton, Karachi. He spat sand that had also covered his body while lying on the beach belly-flopped. His body was semi-naked and bruised. He blinked his eyes which had swelled purple to get a clear view of his surroundings, but soon regretted doing so. His face shrunk with pain on each blink. Blood clots had covered his chin, originating from a once-bleeding jaw. He was brainstorming over what had happened today that brought him here when something distracted him. A fact dancing in shameless nakedness. He was alone on the beach. Far away from the horizon, what he could hear was only a bird’s chirp. Nothing else. Sun was flaming right over his head, but he was unaware of everything except a thought that was pinching him from the inside. Why was he here?

And then all of a sudden it hit him.

One flash. Like a forgotten page. Then another. And then a series of pages coming and flipping away, forming a book. A book he now wants to dump in the furnace of the subconscious. A furnace whose flames are extinguished and what is left now are only embers. Embers that are hot enough to scald anyone who touches it.

He remembers everything now.

A mob coming to the hospital…. beating the doctors and nurses…. removing the equipment that had been his support for the past twenty days... dragging him to this beach… beating him to death… abusing him of blasphemy... again beating him… again abusing him for desecrating the Quran… and then an eternal blackout that came with a blow from an iron chain, which lasted for unknown hours.

He remembers everything now. But it just didn’t make him happy.

Alice had always been a strange girl. From being mocked by her childhood friends to being cursed by her family for bringing disgrace, she had never felt the discomfort of such experiences. What she felt discomfort with, was when somebody talked to her or when somebody sympathized with her, which happened very less. She would then lose her cool, get anxious, and even throw things around as if controlled by the ghost of a poltergeist.

Alice was an adopted daughter. At the time of adoption, the orphanage’s caretaker had confirmed to her future parents that she would grow into a normal girl. But when it did not happen, they sued the orphanage. Her parents started noticing her abnormality when she was three. She was growing retardedly, both mentally and physically. She kept staring at things that would normally interest other kids of her age to the extent of laughter. Emotions were something she never discovered, and affection was something she never received.

Her parents were a busy business couple, who hardly had time for Alice. In their absence, she had constructed a strange world of her own, where her abnormality did not find any relevance. What mattered was only solitude, a place where any world of her choice could be painted. A world that did not comment on her looks. A world that did not sympathize with her for her devastated life. A world that did not mock her. Instead of treatment which would cost a million, the couple thought of saving the money for some future cause and transferring her to an asylum. But they discarded the idea following a conversation that took place between them years ago.

“If we do it, the media will ruin all the image that we have built over the years. They don’t even know we have a daughter”, her father had said.

“Yes, and we will find someone for her marriage after which we will be free of this living burden”, was his wife’s reply.

Alice would often escape from home, forcing her parents to see her from a distance upon discovering her and act as if they didn’t know this poor girl. Near midnight, when silence settled through the streets, she would return to her home. Fearing the deterioration of their image in front of the world, they locked Alice in a cage of eternal anonymity, allowing the strands of darkness to entwine their daughter, slowly and gradually. Smothered by her screams within that cage, Alice would often burst into fits of epilepsy. One day, unable to handle her anymore, they transferred her to the Gwadar Asylum, getting rid of her forever.

If we leave this small incident which was very trivial for her, there were no twists in Alice’s life, except for one fact.

‘Alice’ was not her birth name. Her birth name was Shabana. Shabana Syed.

Abraham’s life was not much different from Alice’s, except that he was loved by his family.

He grew up hearing jeers of the world around him. He was a complete failure, a black sheep in a decent lineage of ancestors. In his school alone, there were numerous instances when he was teased with comments like, “You look ugly. At least you could try not to come last in the class…”.

He used to come home crying, “I won’t go to school again”.

To which, his father would reply, “Is it an option?”.

And then Abraham would continue with life as usual.

Initially, he was affected by such comments. But when life toyed with his esteem like a ritual, he started acting like an ignoramus to such incidents. His parents were in the teaching profession, but ironically Abraham never learned how to confront life. He was fine being defeated every time life screamed at him. He had no passion and did not even think of pursuing a career. After college, life hit him for real when he realized he had failed to get a job, either due to his lack of knowledge or attitude. His only friend from college had started an NGO, so he joined that and started earning a minimum wage through the commission earned from donations.

One day, he was covering an interview for his NGO with the residents of Gwadar Asylum, when he met Alice.

Alice was one of the ten interviewees, but the view she gave in her sloppy voice about her world won Abraham his first breakthrough. The best interviewer award in his NGO for that year.

***

After that interview, Abraham kept coming to Gwadar Asylum, not with new scripts of an interview, but with gifts for Alice. In his interview with Alice which won him many offers from esteemed publishers, he felt for the first time that his presence made someone happier. Alice would narrate to him many amusing incidents of her life by speaking in her usual shaggy voice only decipherable by Abraham, or by drawing, and the two would enjoy hours together. Abraham kept convincing himself that he was just easing a life by dedicating some of his time to her, but he didn’t notice since when he too started liking her presence. The series of meetings between the two continued for the next few months. One day, Alice was expressing her innocent wonder at the concept of marriage and how a child is born after one. Abraham couldn’t stop laughing at this, and asked mockingly, “Well, if given the option, will you marry me?”.

Knowing the fact that Alice doesn’t know about marriages, he kept laughing.

After staring at him for five seconds, Alice hugged him tightly and started sobbing. Abraham wasn’t prepared for this. In the past ten months of his encounter with Alice, he hadn’t noticed her crying once. She was always lost in her in narrating her version of the incidents of this world, a parallel world where the perfectionists were mocked for their fear of making errors, or for their anger while trying to conceive them. Hence, he hesitated initially as Alice hugged him, but very soon he inferred this as just a confirmation of Alice liking his presence and hugged her back tightly. However, his inference was soon to be shaken, and it was not as simple as he thought.

As Alice regained composure, she took a piece of paper and trusted it to convey her feelings better at this moment, than her words. She wrote the following and handed it to Abraham:

“ایلس میرا اصلی نام نہیں ہے۔ یہ صرف ایک نام تھا جو میرے والدین نے مجھے ان سے الگ کرنے کے لیے دیا تھا کیونکہ میں نامکمل تھا۔ لیکن میرا اصل نام، جہاں تک مجھے یاد ہے، شبانہ تھا۔ میں تم سے شادی نہیں کر سکتا، کیونکہ میں مسلمان ہوں اور تم غیر مسلم ہو، جس کی قرآن اجازت نہیں دیتا۔ لیکن میں تمہیں کھونا بھی نہیں چاہتا۔”.

Abraham having known about Alice’s childhood, was taken aback at her hold on the language. Within a second’s fraction, an image scintillated like a possibility, of Alice attending the mandatory sessions of the asylum, which he stoically believed considering greater concerns at this moment. Although Abraham had mockingly asked the question, he realized now that for Alice, things were no joke so far. Staring in Alice’s teary eyes for a long, Abraham left the asylum.

Days passed by.

Two weeks later, Abraham called at the Gwadar asylum.

“Hello, I am Abraham, from Darpan NGO. Is Alice there?”

The caretaker looked at Alice’s cell and said with a sigh.

“Ever since she last met you, her health has taken a dip. She is getting frequent fits of epilepsy, and she has not opened her eyes for the last twenty hours. According to the doctor, the chances of her survival are getting bleak with every passing hour. He says that somehow her childhood trauma of poor parentage is resurfacing from a submerged past. Since this has happened after she last saw you, the doctor requests you to come here. We were not having your contact to address you sooner”.

Within an hour, Abraham came running into the Gwadar Asylum and rushed to Alice’s cell, his adrenaline from a two-week-long planning plummeting with this unexpected turn.

Abraham sat near her and held her hands in his hands. He couldn’t figure out whom he was looking at, because whoever he was looking at, was definitely not the girl he met two weeks ago. Wrinkles had formed near her cheeks, and she looked aged. But his stare soon noticed the things that were still unchanged. Things that only he had noticed so far in her lifetime. Her hair was still as beautiful as before. Her eyelids held the same transcendental calm as always. Her lips held the same awe they always had for a world that was topsy-turvy to her. She was still beautiful to him, as she had always been.

“We have tried all medications we could but everything seems in vain. Considering her condition, it is very risky to take her to the nearest hospital, which is around 20 kilometers away. If her health continued the same trajectory, you might not speak to her again”, the asylum’s doctor said.

Hearing that, Abraham felt a lump in his throat. He stared down at Alice’s closed eyelids as if summoning her from the clutches of an invisible monster somewhere deep within her. He said, “I have come to take you out Alice. Out of this asylum. But for that, you have to open your eyes. Please open your eyes!”. Abraham rested his head gently on her chest and cried bitterly.

Seconds passed, and nothing happened. And then Abraham felt a slight tremor in her body as if something pumped strongly inside her; a heart continuing its quest to float up from an endless abyss.

“Did you see the movement?”, he asked the caretaker.

“No, nothing, she is as usual. You might be imagining sir.”

And then it happened again, much stronger than before. Alice was moving. Life had hit her again. The doctor caressed her foot, looking amazed at Abraham. Abraham smiled back and said, “Don’t look like that doctor. Destiny had lost its turn to separate us long ago. It’s our turn now.”

Less by treatment and more by Abraham’s presence, Alice was brought back to life. Fighting through the dilemma for two weeks over Alice’s revelation of her religion and the constraints of the same, he had discovered a small ray of light at the end of the tunnel her eyes held, a tunnel that veiled the darkness of an unfortunate past. Hence to make her reach that light, Abraham had come up with a plan. The plan was risky, but was the only way Alice could marry him. In Gwadar Asylum, the residents were given teachings of the Quran which she considered her savior and support through this challenging life. Hence, she wouldn’t marry Abraham according to established norms laid in the Quran where a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man. And staying in her house for fifteen years, she had known a handful of things from her parents, her birthname and religion being two of them.

So, Abraham convinced her to convert her religion. Hence though a Muslim woman cannot marry a non-Muslim man, a Christian girl can definitely marry a Christian man. Alice was hesitant at first, considering that by doing this she would be abandoning the Quran for life which was her only support during her darkest troughs. But once Abraham explained to her he too was fond of reading many religious scriptures including the Quran, she agreed to get converted to the Christian faith.

Abraham’s first breakthrough of interviewing Alice had won him many accolades, but it came with a cost. It had made him famous even in those aisles where he would least wish, and would even regret knowing so.

The date was decided. The place was decided. But what was not decided, was their destiny, which still screamed to retreat from this unknown land. But they were too deep in the ocean of love to hear it.

Alice and Abraham reached the Sacred Heart Cathedral in Gwadar on the decided date.

Excitement flowed through each of them, washing away the lethargy of an unwanted life. Alice looked at Abraham and smiled. Abraham smiled back, enjoying the tranquillity of the moment. A tranquillity that Abraham sensed resting on Alice’s tender lips. A tranquillity that was waiting to be shaken by a storm.

Soon enough, the clergy summoned Alice to take the podium and get the rituals completed. As each ritual was completed, Abraham felt something inside him unwinding, with sighs of relief passing out. As the final step, Alice was baptized in the holy water before finally being converted to Christianity. After getting her converted, Abraham asked the clergy to complete the marriage rituals as well. The clergy warned him, citing that this was not a sacred time to marry, but under pressure from Abraham he agreed. The rituals were completed and both of them got married. Abraham thanked the clergy and asked him to bless them for their future life.

“I bless both of you. But be cautious, you both have one predicament to face before getting united and once you face it, no one can separate both of you. But what it is actually, that I can’t tell you right now. Forgive me for that. Let time reveal its plans.”

A bit perplexed though, Abraham left the cathedral along with Alice. But this perplexity didn’t rest long on his mind since he didn’t have a dearth of people to cause predicaments. His relatives, friends, and even his parents may turn against this marriage. But he has married Alice prepared to face anyone who dares to oppose it.

As they were about to step outside the porch, Abraham felt the ground slipping beneath his feet. Fear had found an entrance through the back door and was now standing in front of him; fear which he had controlled for long, but was now seeping through the blood in his veins. A group of hundred masked men were entering the cathedral’s premises through its wrought-iron gates tremoring the air with violent slogans of protecting Islam. And they were not alone. They had brought props along with them, including rods, clubs, sticks, and whatnot; props that showed they had come here for a purpose, and were not leaving easily before it was completed.

“LET’S TEACH THESE BASTARDS A LESSON! THEY HAVE SHAMED ISLAM!”, someone shouted from the horde, which started to gradually close on them in the form of an encirclement. Alice held Abraham’s hand tightly and frowned. Abraham held her by shoulders close to him, not sure who it was needing the presence of the other.

“Listen to me…”, Abraham said when the horde was just a few steps away, “…we have not done anything wrong. It is under the law, and you all are not above it!”.

Abraham sensed an arrow that was mis-shot while adjusting the bowstring, an arrow of provocation that was not meant to be shot. But it was too late. The horde zeroed down on them with a unified scream that quaked the cathedral. Abraham felt a knee blow squirm his stomach, and then a series of thuds with metal objects while he was on the ground. Peeking through the assembly of legs eager to stomp him to death, he couldn’t find Alice but heard her screams from somewhere. He didn’t realize since when he started bleeding until a rod’s knock noised like a splash hitting his spine. He felt someone removing his shoes but was unable to turn back, his head being coerced to the ground. A pointed object pierced through his feet when he screamed, one last time. But in that scream also, flowed a name that pacified the darkness which engulfed him. “ALICE…!”.

Alice heard her name and awakened from an ephemeral darkness as if making space for Abraham to rest within. She felt her cheeks reddened as if slapped multiple times, her hair mangled, and her stomach gnawing. Fear had occupied every aperture within her biological self, and tears couldn’t rest themselves any longer behind her delicate eyelids. She wriggled, screamed, and looked above. The sun which was shining bright on the Sacred Heart Cathedral hours before, had been engulfed by dark clouds. Soon enough, five repeated thuds from an iron rod tore her forehead, rendering her unconscious.

It had been two months since the incident.

Alice had been discharged from the hospital. The night she was escorted back to the Gwadar Asylum, was the last she was seen there. One of the caretakers who took excessive care of Alice during her shift was also found to be missing the next day. Where she was, how she escaped, nobody came to know. Not even Alice. For her, it all happened like a sentient illusion doubtful of its existence.

But Alice knew where she was. In a cottage on a solitary cliff that had been burnt down. In depths of a sea that was witness of a gigantic shipwreck. In the darkness of a forest that will never see light. She knew everything had ended. All sorts of efforts to communicate with Abraham from the hospital were in vain on the last day. He would either be dead or would refrain from greeting her ever. But in her thoughts, in her second world, he was still alive. That world had always mattered to her more than the one where she breathed—a world where she could paint anything of her choice. But this time, it was difficult.

Alice had made Iqbal Park and the streets circumventing it her new shelter. She would come and sit for hours at the marron-painted wooden bench during the day and would use the streets for her nights. People who would come to the park to jog, exercise, or simply inhale fresh air would look at her in pity and continue with their lives as usual. As she immersed in the memories of Abraham gnarling from her past, a stream of dopamine fuelled through her body vanquishing all emptiness and negativity churning inside her since the previous night. Sitting on the bench and staring in the distance during the day, she waited till the night for Abraham to come and wake her up from her daydream saying “It was all your illusion. You and your life are as perfect as they should be. Now come with me”, as he always said and made her smile.

But Abraham would never come. And she knew it somewhere deep within.

Unknown to Alice, Abraham was still under treatment in one of the hospitals in Karachi, where his family had brought him fearing his life in Gwadar. He was wandering alone in the eerie silence of the Cliffton beach, after a mob who knew him through his profession had attacked him, again. From the outskirts of the beach where silence broke and human voices began to be heard, he gathered some clothes and managed to reach the hospital bruised throughout. Minutes after calling the police, his father, who was also attacked when the incident happened, cried on seeing Abraham return, witnessing his family’s life destroyed in front of him.

Abraham silently took his bed without shredding a single stance of shame, but something inside him was boiling for a long, waiting to steam out when the right time struck. Something that went unnoticed by his father as he looked into his son’s eyes. A last hope that was fluttering in the darkness inside him for years.

The increasing intervention of the government had brought Pakistan into the global limelight. It was rare that the daily headlines in the USA, Canada, India, and other countries didn’t comprise news from Pakistan. For all the investments the country guttered in establishing an autocratic regime, it was soon to be included in the FATF’s grey list. Worldwide protests asking the UNSC to interrupt, were occurring for the citizens who faced the consequences of opposing the government’s constraints. A civil war had broken out in the country to topple the regime, but the rebellion force was much weaker and unequipped as compared to the nation’s military. Abraham knew this was all coming. He knew that for these countries to remain heroes in front of the world, they would have to keep accepting immigrants from Pakistan into their borders with warm embraces.

As winter began its retreat from Pakistan, a letter reached the Gwadar asylum. It was from Abraham addressing Alice, asking her to come to the Gwadar International Airport the next day. A flight had been booked to Seattle for Alice and his friend Manish, who was also planning to shift to USA, as one had been booked from Karachi to the same. Abraham had been planning this for years, waiting for his savings to become apt. Marrying Alice was important before escaping this country, to ease out the formalities of staying in special immigrant centers being opened across the Christian nations. He waited for her response until his flight took off, but nothing came, though he remembered sharing his contact details with the asylum when Alice’s health had surged down. He remained in his seat bruised and wriggling from his haunting past and an alarming future. He had heard the news in recent days from Pakistani media about foreign citizens carrying anti-nationalist agendas being killed by unknown gunmen portrayed as heroes in the country. Abraham along with his family reached Seattle breathing all this chaos, unaware of the tragedy he was soon to hear; a tragedy that had passed the previous day in the Gwadar asylum.

A day before, Alice was sitting in Iqbal Park, gazing at some unexisting horizon. A horizon that was only visible to her; a horizon that marked the end of a pacifying world, and the beginning of a cosmic morgue. A morgue of memories, love, and reason to live. Her eyes fluttered slightly as if she saw her soul involuntarily stepping out of her body into the boundaries of the morgue. But her physical body still rested on the bench.

A few meters away, a youth wing of the central ruling party was standing with the national flag hoisted high, and was chanting slogans of constructing a great unvanquishable Pakistan in years to come. As the park resonated with the slogans, Alice felt a ruffle in the air. But for her, it was not the slogan. She imagined her soul peeking from an aperture in the horizon, calling her to step into the endless morgue. She felt a life in her legs and stepped up from the bench, her eyes unmoved from the abyss staring from the front. She just didn’t realize, it was a life thrusting her inches closer to her death.

Meanwhile, in Gwadar asylum, a new caretaker who had joined the previous day announced a letter from some Abraham over the asylum’s speakers, summoning the concerned person to step down and receive it. However, as the static of the microphone halted, she was surprised to feel the eerie silence that settled in the asylum and was now staring her right into her eyes in the form of residents and caretakers, as if she had said something they didn’t believe. Her innocent perplexity lasted for a moment before her superordinates approached her and took the letter from her hands. They didn’t believe it, since all measures to communicate with him had failed the day they lost Alice. Hoping to save a life, they once again began the search for Alice. Within an hour, a dozen Wranglers and Cherokees that belonged to the asylum were scouring through the grounds of Gwadar, searching for Alice. But she was nowhere to be found.

The sun had disappeared over the horizon and dusk had settled in. Alice had left the park long ago passing lifelessly through the people enjoying the nightlife, through the aging winter showing its presence by periodic breezes, through the honking cars symbolizing the grand chaos seeping through the country, and through the residential terrains of Gwadar. She was in now some barren land, scarce of human population and noises. A few meters ahead a cliff stood, holding the might of the Arabian Sea roaring ahead. She halted for a moment, allowing the sweetest memories with Abraham to cross her mind once. But every time she thought of Abraham, it came with a cost; the gruesome imagery of a mob breaking Abraham’s bleeding spine while she screamed from within the horde.

Something happened to her all of a sudden. A thought floated up from within her. Her lips curved and opened slowly, giving out a distorted laugh. She realized the weakness of the world’s restraints to separate her from her most beloved thought. She knew she could imagine the thought again and end her life, resting within it timelessly. She realized and laughed even more at the ease of it, and at the useless sorrow she had breathed so far. She realized everything death made her realize in that moment, except one thing. Abraham had become a thought for her - a thought she wanted to turn into her coffin.

Piercing through the sinister silence, she stepped up the cliff, resting for a second there, allowing her last thought to soak her into its tranquil embrace, allowing her lips to whisper his name for one last time, and then without a thought, she left the cliff. A faint splash broke the chilling silence of that barren land, which resettled very soon as if nothing had happened.

By midnight, the jeeps returned to the asylum bare-handed, having failed to find Alice anywhere in the port city of Gwadar.

After anticipating it for three long days, a phone finally rang in a room of a rented apartment in Seattle.

“Hello, who is this?”, Abraham asked.

“Hello sir, we are from Gwadar asylum. There is some tragic news to tell, are you free right now?”, a female voice spoke from the other end.

Abraham just sighed, his silence confirming to the speaker that he had no option but to hear.

“When we received your letter a few days back, Alice had already left the asylum a day before. A female caretaker who took excessive care of her also went missing since then, indicating her possible role in Alice’s escape. We didn’t… I mean… we couldn’t find Alice the next day and thought that she might not be feeling comfortable here without you, after the incidents that had passed. Thus, we didn’t think of reporting about her absence. But when we received your letter, we sent our transport through every street of Gwadar again in the hope of bringing her back to a better life. This time also we failed, after hours of searching. But today morning, police found a dead body floating over the Arabian Sea… and sadly sir, it's of Alice”, the caretaker said the last sentence in one go, as if rehearsed repeatedly.

As she fell silent, Abraham felt a surge of rage within him. He had a plethora of words to say, questions to ask, and answers to seek, but his throat choked and words couldn’t come out of his mouth. A tide of emotions whirled within him and found an escape through his eyes. His hands tremored and he left the receiver loose from his grasp.

“Sir, are you there? Should we perform her funeral rights, sir? I couldn’t hear you, sir… Hello!”, the voice on the other side kept echoing through the room from the fallen receiver, before getting disconnected.

Abraham wasn’t hearing all this. Not even the voice of his father calling from the adjacent room. He had just turned towards the window looking out, seeing the face of Alice smiling from some distant void.

The 2 AM harvest moon was shining brightly over The Globe and You’s office in Seattle. The streets were engulfed by a silence that veiled the life breathing inside. In a small room inside, Abraham was sitting along with his colleague Rowan. After struggling for months, he had found an ad hoc job in this newspaper as a columnist.

“Abraham, it has been eight months now. You should ask for a full-time role now. Your articles are liked by people. Daily we get atleast one mail praising some of your articles”, Rowan said sipping his latte.

“Every time I tried, they turned down my request raising some financial concerns. It feels pointless now. I am trying to seek some other sources of income, like through books. I am writing one currently. A novel, to be precise”, Abraham said.

“Oh, you never told me about it! Genre?”, Rowan asked.

“It’s a bit complex. I will tell you the name, you can just wait for a few months and then read it yourself. Its name will be Lost Heaven".

“Brilliant, but you should try asking once again regarding your job here. Novels can’t get you a consistent income”, Rowan said and lifted from his seat, leaving Abraham alone in the room with his thoughts.

It had been two years since Alice’s death. Abraham had mastered it well to mask his obsession with his past with a look that faked to be living in the present. No one could tell the magnitude of the atrocity he was battling within until it happened.

In months to come, Abraham completed his novel and with the help of his friend Manish, who worked at Seattle’s elite publishing house PrintVilla and who helped him with the international marketing of the novel, made the sales go far above his expectations. He was happy to everyone who saw him, but to anyone who read him, he was still unchanged, as he had been through years. Many interview calls came to him for his book in the upcoming months, most of which he kept rejecting.

On a Friday evening, a year after his novel was published, he got a call from Seattle Times, one of the leading American newspapers. After a brief introductory confirmation, the voice from the other end spoke.

“Congratulations sir! Your novel Lost Heaven has been termed as 2014’s bestseller. We want to schedule a brief interview with you tomorrow, so please confirm your availability for the same”.

He took a small momentary pause, and then said “Yes, thanks. You can come anytime between ten and five the next day”. Saying this he disconnected the call, knowing that his time had come.

The next day, the Seattle Times’s team reached Abraham’s residence at around eleven. His father opened the door and made them sit in the hall next to Abraham’s room. “He hasn’t got up till now, probably he should have given the time as twelve and five”, his father laughed, and knocked on Abraham’s door telling about the guests. The room didn’t open for long. His father called on his phone, but it rang unanswered. “He keeps his phone next to his head. I don’t know why he isn’t picking up”. With panic rising gradually in his heart, he permitted a young brawny reporter from the newspaper’s team to break the door open. To their surprise, his bed was vacant, but the washroom was unlocked. As the reporter stepped ahead and opened it slowly, he saw Abraham’s body lying drowned in the bathtub, a dozen emptied aspirin packets thrown on the floor.

A copy of his novel was lying on the wet floor with its blurb on the upside, reading the words that Alice wrote to him years ago in the asylum in Urdu.

"Alice is not my real name. It was just a name my parents gave me to distinguish me from them because I was imperfect. But my real name, as far as I remember, was Shabana. I cannot marry you, because I am a Muslim and you are a non-Muslim, which the Quran does not allow. But I don't want to lose you either”.

Beside the novel, a note was lying in Abraham’s writing, which read “Destiny had lost its turn to separate us long ago. It’s our turn now.”